On September 26, I met with David Yurth, who is the Director of Science & Technology at Nova Institute of Technology in Salt Lake City. He and his wife treated my wife and me to lunch, then took us to their home where David showed me a few videos of some technologies his group is pursuing, which he'll allow me to talk about later.

The primary reason for the meeting was to discuss open sourcing the Nova Neal Compression Engine. I shot a video of him giving a brief introduction, which I've transcribed for the sake of those of you who visit our site through translation services.

In preface, let me say that while I respect David and his team at Nova for open sourcing this, and they seem to be a very bright group, I have a hard time believing this design will work. I don't see any way that it harnesses the wheelwork of nature, unless it is a heat pump or something like that, pulling heat from the environment.

Official Websites

Videos

Overview Video

In 1936, an inventor by the name of Robert Neal obtained a patent from the US Patent Office for an engine whose medium of exchange was compressed air, which was self-sustaining once it got started.

The patent application was initially denied because "perpetual motion" was a category of application that the patent office had decided they would not respond to. So, as the story goes, Mr. Neal packed up his engine, took it to Washington [D.C.], put it on the desk of the patent commissioner, turned it on, and demonstrated it, after which, he got his patent.

The story about what happened to the engine is a matter of record. Eventually, because of interference from people who wanted his engine and who kidnapped his daughter as a way of compelling him to relinquish it, he agreed that he would disassemble the engine and distribute the parts and not make it any more.

In the 75 years since that happened, to the best of our knowledge, no one has succeeded in either identifying the specific set of principles that made it work, or recapitulating the engine or in a newer or similar kind of design.

After about 10 years of research on this process, we know how his engine worked, and we understand the principles that are involved. And [with what] we have available today, with 21st century technologies and materials, [we have the ability] to operationalize what he created with much cruder materials a long time ago.

The engine operates as a heat exchanger. There is nothing exotic about it.

What happens in his engine is this. Two secrets made it possible for him in his design to build a self-sustaining heat-exchange, air-compressor engine.

1) He developed a valve that enabled him to put low-pressure air into a high-pressure tank.

2) He designed his engine in such a way that the first air that went in was re-compressed to a higher pressure, and the tank he accumulated the pressure in was designed and put so that he could retain the heat of recompression.

What that meant was, based on the calculations that we have developed today, 100 psi air input into his engine at 20 ft3/minute was translated into a much higher pressure that allowed him to tap the same input volume, but at a self-amplified pressure that was 8-12 times higher than the original input value.

It's just as simple as that.

So, what we've done is put together an abstract that details the principles that make it work, a partial list of components that are needed in order to build one today, and the sources for the pieces that made his engine unique.

Essentially what happens is that we take a tank of about 100 gallons. The tank is a serious piece of business. You have to make sure, when you're operating at pressures that are in excess of 1100-1200 psi that you haven't short-cut anything on your tank. One end of the tank (the dome) has to be detachable, because the recompression equipment goes inside the tank, and has to be contained in it, in order for low pressure air to be input into an internally-held air-booster while the heat of compression is retained inside the tank.

So, [you can get] a Haskell Boster, or a booster made by Eaton, or other manufacturers -- ubiquitously available on the Internet, they use them on the Space Station, you can buy them in a quantity of one, for anywhere from $2500 to $5000. These are typically the kinds of devices that are used to take air pressure from a conventional single- or double-cylinder compressor, and convert that into 4000 psi pressure in scuba tanks.

We're just going to put one of those inside the [larger] tank; seal it up; make sure that the tubing and the piping is pressure-rated, so it isn't collapsed under the internal pressure of the [larger] tank.

Once that is put together and engineered, then you have a compressor on the outside of the larger tank, which is driven by an electric or gasoline-powered engine, and connected by a slip-clutch of some kind, so that once the engine becomes operational from the [internal] tank, you can disconnect the [external] compressor from the extrinsically-powered unit, and drive it by an air-powered engine, which takes the air off the [internal] tank, out through the dome.

We've specified an [Angelo] DiPietro Engine, [which we] like because it has a rotating cylinder, it operates with very high torque and very high efficiency at a relatively low consumption rate. So, at something on the order of 18 - 20 ft3 / minute, the DiPietro Engine, powered by a tank that is compressed at 800 - 1100 psi will enable that little engine to drive two things simultaneously.

1) The first thing it will do is drive the external compressor so it is continuously recompressing the [internal] tank; but you have 40-45% of the work potential provided by the pressure in the [inside] tank left over to perform other kinds of work.

2) So the DiPietro Engine can also be attached to a compressor, or an alternator, or a generator, or a pump, or anything that requires shaft-driven torque in order to perform work function.

The reason this apparatus works is because the air that is put into the [inside] tank at 100 psi as the initial value, without the use of any external, extrinsic, mechanical or electrical power is driven through the internal re-compressor, which operates by cams. That's what allows you to put low pressure into a tank that's re-pressurizing it to about 800 psi. By retaining the heat of compression, the 800 pounds-per-square-inch pressure coming out of the re-compressor is further amplified so that you have a compressed tank at 1100 - 1200 psi at whatever the ambient temperature is inside the tank.

[By email, David elaborated: It continues to work because air is constantly being withdrawn and replaced. When the work function potential is withdrawn the pressure is reduced along with the volume. When the external air motor drives the compressor, it regenerates the heat and pressure in a continuous operational cycle. It is not static – it runs all the time, working to find a homeostatic balance.]

If you paint that tank black, and sit it out in the sunshine, you'll get an incremental amplification of between 25 and 40% in addition to the retained thermal value that is retained from the compression.

[Correction: The 100 gallon tank is going to have maximally 2 square meters of collecting sunshine surface. The Sun gives about 1.5 kilowatt per m2. So even if it would collect all of the sun energy it would increase efficiency by few percent -- not 25-40%.]

So, this engine would cost between $7500 and $10000 to build, using ubiquitously-available, off-the-shelf materials; and will generate around 45-48 kilowatts of power, continuous. [That is in self-looped mode, with no external input to maintain it.]

When you put this thing together, you should have a good heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning or refrigeration guy help you make sure that your connections and your tubing, and the other interstitial pieces of your apparatus are going to be able to withstand the pressures, so you don't introduce leaks and other kinds of anomalies into the system.

We're releasing this information. We've done the calculations, we've tested all the pieces; we're in process of building a demonstration engine now. We hope to be able to bring that with us to the next TeslaTech Convention in Albuquerque in 2014.

We're open sourcing this design. The reason I'm doing that is because I want the design to be in the world. I don't own it. I didn't create it. I understand it. And I'm willing to share it with anybody that wants to build it, with absolutely no charge, and no strings attached.

If you want this information, it's ubiquitously available. Sterling is going to publish on the PESWiki site. You go there and download it. If you want to correspond with me about what to do and how to make it work, I'd be more than happy to entertain your calls or your inquiries.

There are no fees. There are no charges. There are no strings attached. If you build it, you own it. And more power to you.

Instructions

Paper (doc) - details the principles that make it work, a partial list of components that are needed in order to build one, and the sources for the pieces that made his engine unique.

Featured / OS: Ambient Air Engines > Nova > Nova Neal Compression Engine involving a self-sustaining, heat-exchange, air compressor - "Based on the calculations that we have developed today, 100 psi air input into his engine at 20 ft3/minute was translated into a much higher pressure that allowed him to tap the same input volume, but at a self-amplified pressure that was 8-12 times higher than the original input value." (PESWiki; September 30, 2013)